Help me understand

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Deleted member 411033

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Hi, I have fallen in love with the most beautiful, clever, witty, intelligent and wonderful woman. I have never felt so loved and we can communicate in a way I have never had before. She is polyamorous and I have always been monogomous. Though I have had quiet a few sexual partners who have had boyfriends I have only once cheated on a partner and I guess I am saying this because I want to be honest and because I am trying to elicit some honest help, I am heterosexual and I feel no jealousy towards her main partner. She tells me she loves me just as much and I want to believe her. I have an anxious attachment style and I am about to start therapy. It's frustrating because although my partner is the focus of my anxiety, she is not the cause. I am more in love than ever before. She is beautiful, clever and amazing and I we have bonded so quickly and if she lets me I will love her all my life. The thing is though I will never be the one she sleeps with at night, I miss her and I am doing all I can to make my attachement style healthy. My friends tell me to run, that I will never be fulfilled, I try to explain what she means to me , that for me this is a long term commitment. Part of me hopes I can find someone who at least can help me understand. I wonder if I should try and embrace it, find someone who can help me fill the gaps, but I love my girlfriend and I feel I can't ask someone and I wouldn't even know where to start. How do you explain that you love someone and they love you and that whoever else you meet will be a secondary? Last night I asked my girlfriend how deep she wants this bond to go. How long she wants it to last. She told me it already runs deep in her too. That she wants it to last for all our lives. I want that too. I feel this deep bond and I will love her all my days if she wants it too. Yet I also need someone to watch TV and eat chinese with, someone to cuddle and she has a partner she lives with, so for her that will never be me.

Secondary is a word that scares me. I told my friend who is polyamorous about my relationship and he laughed and said "oh your the secondary". He told me I am going to get hurt, that her love for me was just infatuation and now his words haunt me. My love told me this was not true, that she loves me just as much but part of me can't help but hear the word echo at times. It's not jealousy, it's not about comparison, I would never change a thing about her. Yet the idea I am not important to her sets off my anxiety. I spent 5 years in a marraige where I was physically and emotionally abused and it destroyed so much of my personality and my lover heals me and loves me. The fact that I know I will never be her primary leaves me with a sense of worthlesness that leaves me in pain but in so many ways I am so lucky and the biggest way is that I have never been so in love and I just want to be happy and reassured with what I have. I am in what I believe is called a non-hierachal polyamorous relationship and I am trying to be more secure about it so would like to know what people think.

I want to better understand her and also come to terms with this. I am sorry to ramble but I don't know what to do or who to turn to to make sense of this.

Any advice, thoughts appreciated
 
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You aren't healing from your old relationship if your current one leaves you with a sense of worthlessness.

Is your girlfriend and her other partner newly open in their non-mono relationship to have a rule that she has to go home every night? Why will you *never* get overnight dates? I'd find that a deal-breaker in a relationship. You say it's non-hiearchical but use the terms primary and secondary, and she never stays the night with you. What's actually going on here?

I'm glad you'll be starting therapy soon, sounds like you have a lot to work through.
 
It appears I am making a hash of explaining. My partner. has never made used the words primary or secondary except to respond to my friends comments. My girlfriend and her other partner have always been poly and I am new to all this. It was an error to say I will never be her primary because she does not think in those binary terms and I am doing her a dis-service and she is perfectly imperfect just as she is. She does loves me just as much but differently, in so many ways I have never felt more loved.

When I say that I say that I will never be her primary I am trying to express that I would love to be able to just give her a hug and tell her I love her every day. by using primary and secondary am using terms that do not exist in my current relationship because I have only ever experienced monogomous relationships before and I need help to understand the relationship I am in. She does stay over once every couple of months. We have been seeing each other a few months now and I see her at least one a week. My girlfriend has told me we don't sleep together very well and it's easier for her to sleep at home which I understand yet my heart feels when it's at it's most vulnerable and intimate she disappears and my treacherous heart feels abandoned. I know I am being demanding, I know that I will never be the one she hugs every day and I just wish it didn't hurt.

She is amazing at helping me open up. She touches me and my whole being responds.

I am still healing from my last relationship and I have along way to go. I seek always to evolve and put myself back together. I am struggling to express things and my friends are telling me to run, I guess I am looking for reassurance because this I know for certain. I love her all the way and I am committed. I would stand by her and her partner and give them both all my love and respect above anyone else in this world. It sounds weird but I love him as a someone who loves her. I feel he might be the only other person in the world who understands how I feel about her. I respect him and I care for him too. I love her with love so bright it shines in my eyes. I just want to believe that this can work.
 
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Okay, that sounds slightly better and since it's a new relationship there's room for growth into it as well - increase in in-person time could be a future possibility as you become more entwined.

Being so new, I'm guessing you're both in the throes of New Relationship Energy (NRE) sometimes called being twitterpated (see: Bambi). This is likely what your friends are teasing you about, and in some respects they're right, not all relationships last beyond the NRE phase, and that's okay. Others...do. clearly right now you're both imagining the latter. It will take work, mono and poly relationship models require a lot of work to maintain relationships when the mundane kicks back in. Do the internal work to be able to manage your side of the relationship, and hold her accountable for maintaining hers and working towards greater fairness.

(I know I'm replying to a deleted account, I just figure he might pop back and see that he wasn't shouting into the void.)
 
.... my treacherous heart feels abandoned.

I am still healing from my last relationship and I have along way to go.


Your heart is very likely the opposite of treacherous. It is faithful to you and communicating with you loud and clear. If you're hearing alarm bells, then it's best to listen to them, no matter what anyone else may or may not be intending, because not listening results in anxiety. You're clearly in territory that is terrifying for you and instead of dismissing your heart's communication as treacherous, you'll do better to honor its message and slow down. You don't have to make any decision this red hot minute, but you do have to listen to your fear if you're looking to get out of this anxiety loop. Listening to feelings (heart) does not mean acting, it means respecting.

How long ago did your last relationship end? How long was your last relationship?

These are important questions because poly issues aside, you just might not be ready to get back into a relationship. Contrary to popular advice, nobody can heal you from the pain of a previous love. That's something everyone has to do on the inside.

(Like Evie, I am also aware that this person is gone, but ....... )
 
Gosh, since when does admin allow people to delete their accounts? I've never seen this before, in the 9 years I've been here, except in cases of abuse or stalking.
 
Gosh, since when does admin allow people to delete their accounts? I've never seen this before, in the 9 years I've been here, except in cases of abuse or stalking.
Technically, these accounts have not been deleted, they have just had their usernames changed. The issue with not allowing accounts to be deleted was because of the post-content factor, and the fact that people have gone through the effort of replying to said posts. So they will deactivate the account and change it to an anonymous-sounding username, but they will not delete individual posts or threads (with the exception of Life Stories and Blogs, under various circumstances). It's always been like that, but it's just that whenever someone throws a hissy-fit about it in public because they don't have that level of control at the profile level, it does create the impression that there is no middle-ground solution.

I am, however, disappointed that the edit window was reduced from 12 hours to 15 minutes, and I know I'm not alone in that regard.
 
Technically, these accounts have not been deleted, they have just had their usernames changed. The issue with not allowing accounts to be deleted was because of the post-content factor, and the fact that people have gone through the effort of replying to said posts. So they will deactivate the account and change it to an anonymous-sounding username, but they will not delete individual posts or threads (with the exception of Life Stories and Blogs, under various circumstances). It's always been like that, but it's just that whenever someone throws a hissy-fit about it in public because they don't have that level of control at the profile level, it does create the impression that there is no middle-ground solution.

I am, however, disappointed that the edit window was reduced from 12 hours to 15 minutes, and I know I'm not alone in that regard.
Thanks, ref. And yeah, I am not sure where all the mods and the admin went after switching to this new format, but requests are going unaddressed.
 
Thanks, ref. And yeah, I am not sure where all the mods and the admin went after switching to this new format, but requests are going unaddressed.
They are obviously checking the Moderators' section and responding to requests for profiles to be anonymized, so they're around. Not sure if there are any others besides Emm and Imaginary Illusion anymore, though.
 
I'm sure this forum gets a load of spam every day. Someone must be deleting the spam (and banning the spammers).
 
I'm sure this forum gets a load of spam every day. Someone must be deleting the spam (and banning the spammers).
Now that the forum has been upgraded to the current Xenforo version, spam is not such a big problem anymore. The reason the old forum got so much spam was because it was an old, outdated version of VBulletin that had old, outdated spam filters.
 
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